Wednesday, May 30, 2012

finance industry and social media


I read an interesting article in the Huffington Post regarding the finance industry and social media. As a former banker, I can attest to my own group’s lack of social media use to connect with and market to clients. According to this article, this trend is changing. For example, currently “44% of the Massachusetts’ investment advisers use at least one social media site,” which is a significant increase from past usage. With the adoption of social media, potential regulatory violations come into play, often because communications are difficult to track. Many institutions still lack guidelines for employees to follow when leveraging this new technology. This is of particular concern for investment advisers who are providing stock recommendations for clients. “An ongoing struggle for advisers is uncertainty over whether investors who click the "like" button on an adviser's Facebook pages are effectively giving testimonials, or a positive endorsement about the adviser.”  Massachusetts actually issued a ruling on this, stating that purely a Facebook like without commentary is not considered expressing a testimonial. I agree with this ruling and believe that other states should adopt similar guidelines. I do not feel that visitors to an adviser’s Facebook page would typically sift through all the people that have “liked" that adviser and as a result be influenced by that action. As long as comments are not left in addition, there should not be restrictions against this action.    
-Danielle Cervelli

No comments: